Head study of a young woman with a pearl earring

The German-born Jan Boeckhorst was a versatile Flemish Baroque painter and draughtsman, whose artistic abilities ranged from history paintings, genre scenes, allegorical works and intimate portraits, influenced by the style of Antwerp’s three leading Baroque painters: Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck and Jacob Jordaens. Indeed, after moving to Antwerp in around 1626, Boeckhorst became a pupil of Jordaens and possibly studied with Rubens. While no firm evidence confirms the latter, he and Rubens certainly formed a close relationship during the 1630s and collaborated regularly. After becoming a master in Antwerp’s Guild of Saint Luke in circa 1633, Boeckhorst assisted Rubens on the decorations for the Pompa Introitus Ferdinandi (1635) and, following the younger artist’s sojourn to Italy in 1637, assisted with Rubens’ mythological paintings for Philip IV's hunting lodge, the Torre de la Parada (1637-8). Visual and documentary evidence also indicates that Boeckhorst worked closely with Anthony van Dyck, in collaboration with the artist, but also making copies after his work. Seemingly rejecting an invitation to be court painter for Queen Christina of Sweden in 1649, he remained active as a painter in Antwerp, where he died on 21 April 1668 and was buried in the collegiate Saint Jacobskerk three days later.

With her distinctive physiognomy and reddish-brown drawn back hair, this head of a young woman strongly recalls that of Rubens’ Head Study of a Young Woman, Looking Down in the Marseille Musée des Beaux-Arts (inv. no. BA383). The features of the head study in Marseille have been compared to those of Rubens’ sister-in-law, Susanna Fourment, known from the drawing in Vienna (Albertina) and her famed portrait in the National Gallery, London (see N. Van Hout, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard: Study Heads and Anatomical Studies, XX.2, eds. B. Schepers and B. Vanoppen, Turnhout and London, 2020, I, pp. 220–221, no. 90; II, fig. 305). Hans Vlieghe, Nico van Hout, Bert Schepers and Brecht Vanoppen have dated the present work to the 1640s, postulating the theory that this picture may be a copy by Boeckhorst of a lost tronie by Rubens, which Boeckhorst could have acquired at the so-called Specificatie – an inventory of works compiled for auction following Rubens’ death in 1640 – leaving a fascinating record of a lost picture by Rubens of the same sitter as that in Marseilles.

We are grateful to Nico van Hout, Hans Vlieghe, Bert Schepers and Brecht Vanoppen for proposing the attribution to Jan Boeckhorst, after first-hand inspection, and their assistance in the cataloguing of this picture, and to Dr. Maria Galen for endorsing the attribution on the basis of photographs.